Twenty-Fifth Entry

I am still very homeless and very worried and am now accepting donations.

Here's my poem:

I HAVE YOUR SON: A "REAL" RANSOM NOTE

I delivered the letter on a sharp October night. 7:24pm, August 9th, 1976. The paper was typewriter-fresh, the ink felt to my parents’ fingers as if it had just dried. Inside, my mother continued to murmur, as if her voice was wrapped in flannel. My father, upon reading the letter, furiously began sitting on the stoop in his undershirt and black socks. And gray slacks. And he kept that up for several months, a nightly vigil. I had recently made a werewolf mask for Halloween. With paper. And several brown lengths of yarn dangling from the facade. I sat in the uppermost branches of our family oak, glad for the shivering sensation. Watching my father as he looked down our walkway to our street. In the suburbs each car that speeds by is rare enough that it commands suspicion. My father imagined each one of these unobtrusive sedans slowing to push my brother out to roll towards our doorstep. My father would sigh in between cigarettes and wring his Boris Karloff hands. It felt like a classic tragedy, and although I knew plenty about tragedy from nights spent comatose in front of the television, I felt I had nothing to say to my numbly resigned family, and I took a bus to the coast and I wandered around. Everyone’s face on the chilly boardwalk looked totem-like and, only being 17, I soon found myself in the custody of the police. In the drab cell I began writing a second note to my family explaining my sister’s kidnapping. I would disclose no terms. I would ask for no ransom. I composed the note in my head with the intention of typing it later.